The Other Medicine That Really Works: How Energy Medicine Can Help You Heal In Body, Mind, and Spirit

Heidi DuPree, RN CTN

Synopsis

Western Medicine can save your life, but to heal your life, you need Energy Medicine.

Although we have twice the life expectancy of our ancestors, the quality of our lives is increasingly diminished by chronic physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health issues due to a pervasive lack of knowledge of their core causes and treatment.

Weaving together mind-body health information with scientific studies and true-life stories of healing, The Other MedicineThat Really Works restores the knowledge that is your birthright. This award-winning comprehensive guide to a healing way of life will help you learn the key to working with health issues, taking you beyond symptom elimination into growth, transformation, and radiant joy. In this award-winning book you will discover:

-- How and why mind-body health information was lost from the Western culture
-- The function and anatomy of your body energy systems
-- The key to activating the healing process in your life
-- How to recognize your own healing

-- What can block healing and how to work with it
-- Everyday energy medicine that you can put into practice now

Prologue: What You Need To Know Before Your Healing Journey Begins

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

All eyes in the audience were on me as I rose to speak to a local networking group. As the newest member, I had been invited to talk about my book. I came prepared with my “elevator pitch” memorized, that brief summary for getting the point of a book across quickly, meant to be conveyed in the time it takes to ride an elevator. I took a breath and launched into my speech: “I have written a nonfiction mind-body health book that restores lost knowledge of energy medicine to Western culture by weaving together information from ancient cultures, scientific research, personal stories and case histories of healing from my perspective as both a Western Medicine professional and an Energy Medicine professional. It contains everything you need to know to understand the causes of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health issues and the key to healing them in a way that goes beyond symptom elimination into growth and transformation.”

A number of the networkers responded warmly to my brief speech – smiling and nodding. One even shared a positive personal experience from using energy medicine. But a stony-faced woman who identified herself as a scientist avoided eye contact as she spoke: “There’s mechanical energy, chemical energy, and thermal energy,” she began. “But there’s no such thing as an energy field. And the idea of a connection between energy and health is nonsense. People who believe such things are idiots. Idiots!”

After her tirade, everyone’s attention in the room turned back to me, looking for my reaction. But my reaction to this public and personal attack was not readily visible. It was happening on a subtle, energetic level, even though the effects were not subtle at all to me! The normally smooth hum of my energy systems became instantly harsh and chaotic, creating jagged waveforms that initiated a cascade of physiological responses – a tightening in my stomach, blood rushing to my face, and an internal shaking imperceptible to the outside observer.

Although this was not my first such public experience, I was still stunned into silence. Having my work attacked by a scientist should not have come as a surprise, however, given the current state of scientific publishing. According to astronomer Halton Arp, “The tradition of ‘peer review’ articles published in professional journals has degenerated into almost total censorship. The result is real investigative science is mostly now an underground activity.”

Indeed, much of the study of science has historically been about verifying already known concepts, not exploring new territory. In her rebuke of energy medicine, the scientist at the networking meeting was referring to physical, measurable, or veritable energy, while dismissing subtle, immeasurable, or putative energy. It has only been the pioneering scientists willing to brave harassment who have begun to do the research that documents subtle energy and the energetic structures of the body, research that this particular scientist was undoubtedly unaware of. I was also once unaware of this, even though modern documentation of ancient wisdom regarding energy medicine began over a century ago.

It wasn’t until after the meeting, when I had time to process the event and recover my energy that I recalled how I was once like the scientist, dismissive of energy concepts….

While studying to become a registered nurse in the late 1970s, one of my instructors invited a guest speaker to give a presentation and demonstration on “therapeutic touch.” The nurse speaker claimed that without actually touching a person, but rather by making contact with the “energy field” around the body with her hands, she could speed wound healing and relieve pain.

The presentation lasted an hour, but I think I stopped listening after about five minutes. If there was such a thing as an energy field around the human body, then why couldn’t I see it? Why hadn’t I heard of it before? If only one hour out of my four-year education – just weeks prior to graduation – was devoted to the existence of this field, then it must not be very important. Years later I would take this presentation as a sign that the conventional medical field was, even then, beginning to accept the validity of energy-based healing therapies, but at the time, all I could think was – why is this information being tossed in at the last minute? Why was the instructor wasting our time?

The available programs in nursing at that time were based on the Western medical model of healthcare. It was all I knew. The idea that one could facilitate healing in another with nothing but their hands seemed ludicrous. I couldn’t imagine how such a presentation had any place in a respectable university nursing curriculum. I glanced around the room at the other nursing students, studying their faces, trying to gage their reaction. Did they also find this presentation strange and irrelevant?

Everything in my education and limited experience as a twenty-one-year-old told me that healing was accomplished through Western medical treatment – surgery and prescription drugs aimed at eradicating symptoms of disease. While I was taught in nursing school to consider the whole person and take every aspect of their lives into account in their care, the basis of that care was a focus on illness and disease. My job as a nurse was to care for sick people and teach them how to manage their disease, eat for their disease, and take medications for their disease.

When the presentation ended I felt irritated. This silliness about energy and waving hands over the body had taken away precious time needed for practicing important skills – like giving intramuscular injections, calculating drug dosages, or changing dressings.

But even as I studied the Western model, something else was already beginning to trouble me.

Yes, this brief exposure to an alternative therapy – so-called “energy work” – left me with a negative impression. But truthfully, I also felt something vaguely unsettling about my nursing education. Even as I was rejecting non-conventional therapies, I also had the sense that maybe Western medicine wasn’t the only approach, or even the best approach. But at the time, I was too immersed in Western medical culture to pay attention to these feelings.

More than ten years would pass before that unsettled feeling about the limitations of Western medicine emerged again. As my life began to fall apart in my early 30s, I had to face the reality that the model I had staked my career on couldn’t help me. With the realization that my previously accepted view of reality was only an illusion, I thought I was losing my mind. “You’re going to think I’m weird,” I said to the psychotherapist I consulted for help.

As I began to heal, I connected with my life’s purpose – energy healing and the emerging field of energy medicine. But even though I knew what I was meant to do with my life, at first I would stammer and say, “Well, you’re going to think I’m weird, but I practice energy healing therapies,” when someone asked me what I did for a living.

I no longer devalue who I am or what I do with those words. I no longer use those words because I know energy healing is grounded in traditions that date back as far as there are records. I no longer use those words because I know about the scientific discoveries of the last hundred years that validate energy healing therapies. And I no longer use those words because I have healed enough to know better.

Even though I no longer use those words, I can still be triggered by certain situations – such as a stranger referring to me as an idiot in public. In the past, such an attack would have knocked me flat, precipitating illness and a retreat to my bed. The fact that I could see this experience for what it was – an opportunity for growth – and use it as a vehicle for continuing the transformation of old negative beliefs about worthiness and safety is a testament to my own healing journey.

However, the clients coming to me aren’t there yet, and perhaps you aren’t either. Many of the individuals I work with have just awakened to a strange world where everything seems upside down. They come to me vulnerable, apprehensive, and lost. These newly awakened souls say to me, “You’re going to think I’m weird.”

And I say, “I most definitely do not think you are weird.” Far from it. I see you, a being ready to let go of its garbage, ready to evolve, but not knowing how. I see a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, beginning to open its wings… and what I see is beautiful.

And I think how amazing it is that I have been entrusted with this opportunity to witness the unfolding of another human being, and to share what I’ve learned with you in this book.

So dear reader, it’s OK with me if you think I’m weird, but I won’t think that of you. Come along with me and let’s explore the nature of life and other “lost” knowledge of health and healing.

Author Bio

Heidi DuPree is an award-winning author, energy healing therapist-coach, holistic nurse, and Certified Traditional Naturopath with over thirty years of experience in healthcare – half in clinical nursing and half in energy medicine. For over two decades she has avidly studied energy healing, natural health, and the science of transformation. After completing a Doctorate in Traditional Naturopathy, she became certified by the American Naturopathic Certification Board. Heidi is also an ordained nondenominational healing minister, and a musician. She lives in Ashburn, Virginia with her husband, Robert, youngest son, Jacob, two dogs, and two cats.

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